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Gardens in GK Chesterton's Father Brown Stories ANGLICA An International Journal of English Studies 24/1 EDITOR prof. dr hab. Grażyna Bystydzieńska [[email protected]] ASSOCIATE EDITORS dr hab. Marzena Sokołowska-Paryż [[email protected]] dr Anna Wojtyś [[email protected]] AdviSory BoArd Michael Bilynsky, University of Lviv, Ukraine Andrzej Bogusławski, University of Warsaw, Poland Mirosława Buchholtz, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Toruń, Poland Xavier dekeyser, University of Antwerp / KU Leuven, Belgium Bernhard diensberg, University of Bonn, Germany Edwin duncan, Towson University, Towson, Md, USA Guðni Ellíson, University of iceland, reykjavik, iceland Jacek Fisiak, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland Elzbieta Foeller-Pituch, Northwestern University, Evanston-Chicago, USA Piotr Gąsiorowski, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland Keith Hanley, Lancaster University, United Kingdom Christopher Knight, University of Montana, Missoula, MT, USA Marcin Krygier, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland Krystyna Kujawińska-Courtney, University of Łódź, Poland Zbigniew Mazur, Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, Lublin, Poland rafał Molencki, University of Silesia, Sosnowiec, Poland John G. Newman, University of Texas at Brownsville, USA Znak ogólnodostępny / wersjeMichal językowe Jan rozbicki, St. Louis University, USA Jerzy rubach, University of iowa, iowa City, USA Piotr ruszkiewicz, Pedagogical University, Cracow, Poland Wersje językowe znaku Hans Sauer, University of Munich, Germany Znak Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego występuje w trzech wersjach językowych: Merja Stenroos, University of Stavanger, Norway – polskiej Krystyna Stamirowska, Jagiellonian University, Cracow, Poland – angielskiej – łacińskiej Anna Walczuk, Jagiellonian University, Cracow, Poland Nie można tłumaczyć znaku na inne języki. Jerzy Wełna, University of Warsaw, Poland Zastosowanie Wersję polskojęzyczną stosujemy w materiałach opracowanych w języku polskim, anglojęzyczną - w materiałach w języku angielskim. Dotyczy to: – materiałów marketingowych, – internetu i mediów elektronicznych, – materiałów korporacyjnych, – upominków i gadżetów . Wersję łacińską stosujemy w materiałach opracowanych w językach innych niż polski i angielski, a także w materiałach o charakterze reprezentacyjnym. 25 Gardens in G. K. Chesterton’s Father Brown Stories 19 Barbara Kowalik University of Warsaw “The Whole Green Theatre of that Swift and Inexplicable Tragedy”: Gardens in G. K. Chesterton’s Father Brown Stories Abstract This paper provides a survey of garden settings in Gilbert Keith Chesterton’s detective stories about Father Brown, followed by more detailed readings of the first four of the stories, which introduce the clerical sleuth and his principal antagonists and establish the rules of Chesterton’s semiotics of the green theatre of crime. Gardens with their different atmospheres are a favourite setting of crime in G. K. Chesterton’s Father Brown stories.1 This preference is highlighted by the second story of the whole collection, The Secret Garden, whose title and year of publication coincided with those of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s famous novel (the same year 1911 also saw the publication of yet another ‘garden story,’ The Wonderful Garden by Edith Nesbit).2 Whereas Burnett’s hortus signifies chiefly new life, Chesterton’s gardens are more often the mise en scène of death, both literal and spiritual, though they too can witness a moral rebirth.3 A confined and seemingly secure place, like the house to which it is usually annexed, the garden provides a convenient yet shocking setting for crime, one which lends itself well to purposes of investigation while remain- ing widely evocative.4 Chesterton builds upon the archetypal symbolism of the garden: its beauty, innocence, and growth evoke paradise and apparently exclude the dirt and gore of crime, yet also remind us that sin started in Eden. A borderline space between Nature and Nurture, the garden is both a human and a divine provenance in Chesterton’s mysteries, making them more than a shallow form of popular entertainment and a purely commercial enterprise, as they have sometimes been described.5 20 Barbara Kowalik 1. Gardens and Englishness in his mystery stories Chesterton utilises a great variety of gardens, illustrating the English mania for gardening, but also creating a particular atmosphere.6 He is fond of peculiar spatial arrangements, which would provide interesting crime scenes and help him convey additional commentary – cultural, moral, social, po- litical, or religious. Thus, The Crime of the Communist takes place, literally, “on the lawn of Mandeville garden” (717), at a fictional college which faithfully conveys the spirit of ancient English universities: the old Tudor arches “ran like a cloister round the College gardens,” which “had been tended so carefully as to achieve the final triumph of looking careless,” so that “the very flowers seemed beautiful by ac- cident, like elegant weeds” (706). The late afternoon garden scenery stands in sharp contrast with the rigor mortis, which is how Father Brown describes the bodies of the two millionaires and would-be benefactors of the College, poisoned in their chairs on the lawn: “Somehow the rich sunlight and the coloured garden increased the creepy impression of a stiffly dressed doll; a marionette on ani talian stage” (707). As the backdrop to the crime plot, Chesterton fondly recalls the Middle Ages, a time when the Gothic style flourished in architecture and when “the College had been founded […] by Sir John Mandeville, for the encouragement of tell- ing stories” (708). Chesterton prefers, over the modern Communists, “the more artistic and leisurely Socialists” of the type of William Morris (709) and praises the idea of a university, with its motto of “Not differing much, except in opin- ion” (709) and its ideal of fellowship. in the end it turns out that the Communist, though much criticised as the Professor of Theoretical Thieving, is not the assas- sin. While Father Brown exposes Capitalism as another political heresy, and the more dangerous one for being taken for granted, he argues that it is ultimately “the anti-Christian morality or immorality” (718), not a political view, that makes a murderer. The story conveys the spirit of an old oxford college, and of England in general, where traditions like playing cricket and quaint customs like not smok- ing when drinking port after dinner would prevail even in a don with Communist sympathies. The plot of The Red Moon of Meru, in turn, unfolds in the house of Lord and Lady Mounteagle, which was once an abbey, and centres in the cloister garden: “The cloister was on the usual plan, as regards its original structure, but the line of Gothic pillars and pointed arches that formed the inner square was linked to- gether all along by a low wall, about waist high, turning the Gothic doors into Gothic windows and giving each a sort of flat window-sill of stone” (598). This detailed description is crucial for understanding how the precious ruby has been stolen, which is the principal mystery of the story, but it also gives Chesterton an opportunity to accuse the English reformation of committing a greater theft: Gardens in G. K. Chesterton’s Father Brown Stories 21 “the priest’s finger was pointed to the Gothic outline of the great Abbey. ‘A great graven stone,’ he said, ‘and that was also stolen’” (606). In addition, the story illustrates the difference between Christian and Eastern spirituality, the latter represented by “the lines and colours of Asiatic dragons or idols,” a modern decoration added to the cloister and sharply contrasting with its grey Gothic framework (598). Eastern spirituality is embodied especially in the statue of a great green god elevated in the middle of the cloister garden, and its chief worshipper, the man called the Master of the Mountain. Father Brown exposes him as caring solely for “spiritual powers,” while he himself has “much more sympathy with spiritual weaknesses” (595). other differences include be- ing, respectively, against and in favour of reason and being proud and ashamed of crime. “We, whose fathers at least were Christians,” argues the priest, “who have grown up under those medieval arches […] we were all casting the crime from us like a snake,” whereas the Master of the Mountain “was actually luring it to him like a snake-charmer” (606). The actual robber is exonerated on account of being “an English gentleman” and “a Christian thief,” thus aware of the moral law and capable of repentance (606). The story points to the integrity of the English and more generally European tradition in the face of threats coming from the East. 2. Island Gardens An island location is promising for the crime plot but also implies the view of England itself as a garden. in The Sins of Prince Saradine, the two detective pro- tagonists and friends, Father Brown and Flambeau, travel in a boat down the little rivers of Norfolk, “delighting in the overhanging gardens and meadows” (117), before they arrive at their destination: a reed house on a reed island situated in the middle of one such river, as if in “fairyland” (118, 124), whose elfin beauty seems innocent to Flambeau, but sad and evil to Father Brown. The quaintness of the place is emphasised. The house, a long, low bungalow built of bamboo, though pretty and unique, is old, silent, and melancholy: it “stood with its back, as it were, to the river and the only landing-stage,” while “the main entrance was on the other side, and looked down the long island garden” (119). it is this island garden with a broken rose bush that will become the “green theatre” of a bloody family vendetta (128). The tragedy is enacted at sunset time, under “a dome of virgin gold” (127), a regular temporal setting of Chesterton’s garden mysteries, suggestive of a higher order and another world, where “retribution will come on the real offender” (124) with inevitable justice. A river island setting, with an old wooden house in the style of Shakespeare’s England, hidden in thick foliage and surrounded by a grim park, appears as the background of an aristocratic family’s legends and feuds also in The Perishing of the Pendragons.
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